Guerra, Rui Manuel Farinha das NevesAlmeida, SandroCavaco, A. M.Antunes, Maria DulceNunes, Carla2013-09-202013-09-202010AUT: ACA01304; RGU01166;http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/2907Proceedings of the International Conference “Environmentally friendly and safe technologies for quality of fruit and vegetables”, held in Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal, on January 14-16, 2009. This Conference was a join activity with COST Action 924.In this study we have made exploratory tests on a set of 40 apples (Malus domestica Borkh.) ‘Bravo de Esmolfe’, using spatially resolved reflectance (SRR) and diffuse light backscattering goniometry (DLBG). The objective was to test the potential of DLBG for firmness prediction, as compared with SRR, whose potential has been already proved in the literature. SRR is performed with a red diode laser and a CMOS camera. DLBG uses the same laser shining on the apple and a photomultiplier tube collecting the light reemitted from a small area, at angles ranging from 90 deg (tangent to the surface) to 180 deg (normal to the surface). From the measurements several parameters have been calculated (e.g. decay exponent for SRR profiles, anisotropy factor for the DLBG angular distributions) and Partial Least squares (PLS) models for the prediction of firmness were build. The model based on DLBG variables (only) and on SRR variables (only) gave similar results. From here we conclude that, within the obvious statistical limitations of the test, DLBG seems to match the potential of SRR for firmness prediction. The possibility of combining both measures in one model is also discussed.engbook part